Barack Obama and his campaign people have been sending me emails daily for a while now, keeping me informed of his movements and positions and asking me to donate. Now I learned through the blogosphere that I can be informed of his vice presidential running mate decision over email -- yet another indication of the enormous difference between the two presidential candidates, as well as the growth and importance of social media today. And if you're not an email person, you can sign up to have this message texted to your cell phone the second the announcement is made. Marshall Kirkpatrick on his ReadWriteWeb blog commented on what a momentous shift this represents in political communications.
"We expect that if many people do learn about the selection by SMS first, it will likely be an emotional moment that helps advance Obama's mindshare at the very least. Nothing is as immediate as SMS and we think it's a wise move politically to spend political capital like this, in a nod to the new generation of communicators."
He contrasts it with John McCain, whom he says doesn't even know how to use a computer. [Who knows? Maybe McCain will revel in his "old school" back-to-basics style and announce his choice via smoke signals.]
And Kirkpatrick speculates whether the media and bloggers will break the story before it is texted and emailed to the faithful. It certainly is going to put a lot of pressure on the traditional media. If the story is delivered directly to their audiences by the candidate without them, what exactly is their role in reporting on this election, after all?
It evokes the struggle newspapers in particular are having right now with the rapid shift to online advertising and internet-based communication directly with consumers and customers. The Philadelphia Inquirer -- perhaps McCain-like -- recently announced through an internal memo from their managing editor that they are changing their blog policy and publishing certain stories online only after they appeared in their print edition. As reported in The Editors' Weblog,
"In a memo to his staff Mike Leary, Philadelphia Inquirer's managing editor, announced that the paper would now publish "signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews" online only after they have been published in print, but that the paper wouldn't stop publishing immediate breaking news online.
Bloggers may be the ones who have to adapt the most to the new policy, since they may work on content that may 'end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first,' according to the memo. "
Some bloggers took umbrage with this approach, declaring it backward and a lame approach to saving a print medium that essentially is dead. It clearly is trying to differentiate the print publication from the online offering, which is understandable. I know many of our clients still prefer to appear in the print version of a publication rather than just in the online version. It still carries more weight, even if circulation and page numbers are down. As a former Philadelphian who grew up with the Inquirer and its former afternoon rival, the Philadelphia Bulletin, I hope it is an attempt to make sure that the print version stories are thoroughly fact checked and accurate. Even the best journalists we know who write for publication blogs acknowledge that the speed of posts requires a different kind of due diligence than the print editions demand. This is one reason they are willing to post updated versions if someone finds an error and points it out to them.
But, alas, it may just be a ham-handed attempt to stem the tide of online publishing and blogging. And if that is the case, then Mike Leary is like the little boy trying to plug the hole in the dike with his finger. It just isn't possible to go back to the days when print ruled. Print certainly is a more comfortable medium for reading longer articles and it's much easier still to view accompanying photos and graphics in the print publication than online. But online and blogs are growing daily in importance and use and nothing is going to reverse this trend.
I will be interested to watch how this experiment works for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wondering when they will have to admit defeat.
Meanwhile, though, I wonder why Obama is only using email and text to announce his VP candidate and isn't also including Twitter. Thoughts?
UPDATE: A long-time friend and business associate, Angelo Santinelli, sent a comment to this post to me via e-mail that is too good not to share.
Now, about your blog. I am in charge of the McCain smoke signal core and would like to know if you would like your signal in analog or digital? Since when does the leader of the nation, or any company for that matter, need to be technology savvy? Not sure it's a necessary skill. The Chinese athletes probably have a less technical approach to their training and they seem to be cleaning up pretty well. Come on Lois, that was a cheap shot. After all, all the president needs to know about technology is this - black button calls your secretary, red button launches nuclear missiles.
